Her honeymoon with Charles… Christ… and not a relation that she owned who would have the girl, Dorrie, and certainly not her damned father, and the child accompanying them, disaster… She hated herself for remembering. A dinner party for Charles's clients and the music battering through the Manor House from her room and down the panelled staircase, and Charles going upstairs, and the clients hearing the obscenities shouted back at him, catastrophe… The memories queued for her attention. She felt herself shamed for remembering. The village boys were at the funeral. The village boys, work clothes and casual clothes and trainer shoes and earrings, had come and parked their beaten-up cars and their motorcycles at the churchyard gate, and hung their heads as if they cared. The coffin went down, Alastair recited the last prayer.

Mary took off her glove and took the wet earth in her hand and threw it to splatter over the coffin lid.

She stood beside Charles at the gate to the churchyard.

She shook the hands that were offered and smiled automatically as the mourners mouthed lies of condolence. The woman who helped in the house… Charles glanced down at his watch. The man who helped with the garden… Charles bit at his lip, impatient. The woman from the shop and the man from the post office… Charles had made the arrangements for as early in the morning as Alastair would do it. The woman who typed her correspondence… Charles had a London meeting at noon. The women from the committee of the Institute… Charles was fidgeting to be off and he had a floral tie in his pocket that would be exchanged for the black tie as soon as he was in his Jaguar.

The village boys walked past her, like she was no part of their loss.

Arnold was the last in the line. Solid and lovely and dependable Arnold, who did 'something in Whitehall', and she never asked what he did and she was never told, only that it was 'something in Whitehall'. Charles kissed her cheek, murmured about being back late, squeezed her hand, and was off and hurrying for his car.